Was so looking forward to this partly because of the rave reviews and also because I felt it would let me off from reading the book, which after all looked like a tough read. I understand the filmmaker’s dilemma with a serious story like this. How do you present the abuse without making it into abuse porn? Even poor Steve McQueen was accused of making slavery porn out of 12 years a Slave. No one could accuse this film of being style over substance, because there is a lot of substance. But the style absolutely strangles the substance for me. I felt stupid watching it because I could never quite figure out who was speaking to whom or exactly what was being suggested. I can take that fine in a David Lynch film, but even he gave The Elephant Man a telling that did not lose the story. I never could work out what happened to the boy who failed to throw the fight. Something nasty for sure, but his fate just seemed to be shoved aside. A lot of the time, life at the school just seemed no more horrific than any English boarding school. I do understand the critical praise about that hug, it gave me chills, but it was presented so fleetingly I thought myself lucky not to miss it. So yeah, I agree with your gripes except the one about the screen ratio, I think I understood that, courtesy of having grown up in America during that period. Due to the popularity of television at that time it felt like history happened on a square screen. All the important events in my memory: the civil rights marches, Kennedy’s inauguration, Kennedy’s assassination, walking on the moon, they are all black and white and square. I think you have to be of a certain age to have those square memories and in America television was something everyone watched every day. Not so much in Britain with its 3 channels that signed off neatly every night. So I was fine with the ratio, not sure that was the intent. Feel sad it has now ruined the book for me -that should be a lesson learned.
Was so looking forward to this partly because of the rave reviews and also because I felt it would let me off from reading the book, which after all looked like a tough read. I understand the filmmaker’s dilemma with a serious story like this. How do you present the abuse without making it into abuse porn? Even poor Steve McQueen was accused of making slavery porn out of 12 years a Slave. No one could accuse this film of being style over substance, because there is a lot of substance. But the style absolutely strangles the substance for me. I felt stupid watching it because I could never quite figure out who was speaking to whom or exactly what was being suggested. I can take that fine in a David Lynch film, but even he gave The Elephant Man a telling that did not lose the story. I never could work out what happened to the boy who failed to throw the fight. Something nasty for sure, but his fate just seemed to be shoved aside. A lot of the time, life at the school just seemed no more horrific than any English boarding school. I do understand the critical praise about that hug, it gave me chills, but it was presented so fleetingly I thought myself lucky not to miss it. So yeah, I agree with your gripes except the one about the screen ratio, I think I understood that, courtesy of having grown up in America during that period. Due to the popularity of television at that time it felt like history happened on a square screen. All the important events in my memory: the civil rights marches, Kennedy’s inauguration, Kennedy’s assassination, walking on the moon, they are all black and white and square. I think you have to be of a certain age to have those square memories and in America television was something everyone watched every day. Not so much in Britain with its 3 channels that signed off neatly every night. So I was fine with the ratio, not sure that was the intent. Feel sad it has now ruined the book for me -that should be a lesson learned.
Really interesting comment about the screen ratio